"When I looked down at Zennor I knew it was the promised land and that a new heaven and a new earth would take place."

I'm reading these handwritten words on a wall of the Wayside Folk Museum, drawn in by the story told here of their author - step forward Mr D H Lawrence - and the doomed artists' utopia he attempted to set up there.

However, there's much more to Zennor than Lawrence. Indeed, the fact that a tiny coastal village, that didn't merit a mains water supply until 1966, can support an entire museum devoted to its history tells its own story. One room is packed with the tales of past residents: Virginia Woolf, Arnold Foster (the League of Nations' first ever general secretary), George Mallory's widow, John Davey (the last ever native Cornish speaker) and, most surprisingly, Emperor Haile Selassie (he saw out the second world war here).

Passing into another room I'm so enchanted by the legend of the Zennor Mermaid that I am driven outside to investigate. Out on the grassy hulk of Zennor Head I gaze down into Pendour Cove, where a local lad, Matthew Trewhella, once marched away into the sea in pursuit of a beautiful girl with an angelic voice.

Next I hike up the hill to discover the 5,000-year-old Zennor quoit - the largest pre-historic burial chamber of its kind in Europe - before going into the 13th-century Tinner's Arms, where Lawrence wrote the end of Women in Love.

So, a heartfelt appeal: if you happen to be famous or suspect your life might become the basis of a legend, please stay away from Zennor - the museum's bulging at the seams as it is.